Rank and File - latest news

By Barbara Madeloni “Don’t start those buses tomorrow,” said Joe White, executive director of the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association. He was announcing the second statewide education strike in West Virginia in a year, alongside the leaders of the state’s two teacher unions. The… Read More

By Chloe Rockarts On Tuesday, February 12, Buzzfeed workers in the United States voted to unionize. In Toronto, a majority of the ten BuzzFeed Canada workers filed for union certification with the Canadian Media Guild (CMG), a local of the Communications Workers of America. Media… Read More

By Saurav Sarkar With the sixth anniversary approaching of the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed over 1,000 workers, conditions in the world’s second-largest garment export industry are tumultuous. Fifty thousand garment workers in Bangladesh struck earlier this month for higher wages and were met… Read More

Rank & File Radio – Prairie Edition, February 17, 2019: Daniel Huber, founder of the Alberta Vanguard Association and Fairserve.ca, reacts to UCP leader Jason Kenney’s new proposal for a sub-minimum wage for youth and alcohol servers in Alberta. Kenney announced that idea at a… Read More

By David Bacon The election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) as president of Mexico has raised the hopes and expectations of millions of Mexican workers. There could be no better evidence of this than the strike of tens of thousands of workers in Matamoros,… Read More

By Peter Hogarth Labour law changes are coming to federally-regulated workers. If you have been following the Fight for $15 and Fairness in Ontario, then the changes introduced in the Federal government’s Budget Implementation Act, Bill C-86, will sound similar to the labour law changes… Read More

By Robert Devet Last summer Shirley Peck, a cleaner at CFB Greenwood, a military base in rural Nova Scotia, was told that she was to be laid off, and that her well paying job would be contracted out. She was devastated. The contractor offered Peck… Read More

By Haseena Manek Employees of a Your Independent Grocer franchise in Cornwall, Ontario have been on strike since November 23 as employer and franchise owner John Baxtrom and bargaining agent of parent company Loblaws Companies Ltd., refuse to return to the table. RankandFile.ca spoke with… Read More

By Emily Leedham Host of Rank and File Radio – Prairies Edition On February 8, the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix wrote a feature on Keesan Corey, a 19-year old business student and strikebreaker at the Saskatoon Co-op. Hundreds of UFCW Local 1400 members have been on strike… Read More

By Ellen David Friedman We know good organizers when we meet them. They’re accessible. They listen and show respect. They react calmly to all kinds of people, take their time to size up a situation, and engage people on their own terms. They brim with… Read More

By Rick Telfer and Andy Crosby Students, activists, and labour movement leaders are sounding the alarm about the devastating impact the Ford government’s plans for post-secondary education will have on the system’s accessibility and democracy. On Jan. 17, the Ford government announced it was – ostensibly… Read More

Bob Barnetson, Athabasca University prof, provides an overview of the labour reforms introduced by the NDP, and what might happen to those reforms should Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party form government in just a few months. He also provides an update on bargaining and impending… Read More

by Gerard Di Trolio and Doug Nesbitt Two months after the GM Oshawa closure announcement, Unifor’s big idea is a campaign to boycott GM cars made in Mexico. The union is even spending huge money on a Super Bowl commercial that will reach about 5… Read More

By Robert Devet KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – All is not well in the Early Learning and Child Care sector in Nova Scotia, responses to an on-line survey of employers and employees clearly show. Inadequate wages, unhappy workers and a lack of cohesion across regions and service… Read More

By Donna Burman Having a state or province run the subways is a big mistake. In Baltimore, Maryland they already have such a system they are trying to move away. After multiple incidents in Baltimore, including safety issues, a report made it clear that the… Read More

Doug Ford’s “student choice” initiative in Ontario will destabilize student union funding and dramatically alter the landscape for training future student and labour organizers in Canada. In Alberta, the door to attack student funding has been wedged open by right wing bootlickers. Ultimately, it pushes… Read More

By Gillian Russom We had just an enormous number of demands because we’re been dealing with schools that have been neglected for so long, and because as a democratic union we had a pretty big process for all sorts of constituents to say what they wanted… Read More

By Robert Devet KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – Child welfare services in Nova Scotia are underfunded to such an extent that Nova Scotia’s most vulnerable families are suffering. That was the urgent message delivered in unison by Jason Maclean, president of the Nova Scotia Government & General… Read More

General Motors has announced it will end production at five North American plants, just a decade after the company received billions of dollars in U.S. and Canadian taxpayer money and won sweeping concessions from auto unions as part of the bailout. All told, about 6,700… Read More